Prologue 2! Last prologue, I swear.

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If you were to take the villains of Sailor Moon and give them singing abilities, would that in any way have changed the series? After all, idol singers are quite the rage in Japan, perhaps even more intensely than the popstars of North America. This does beg the unnecessary question: would that make the four generals and a brainwashed Mamoru the Backstreet Boys of evil? For that matter, would Evil!Mamoru be A.J.?

Of course this would also imply that the Witches 5 would be the Spice Girls of evil; the Amazon Trio and the Amazoness Quartet being the S Club 7 of evil; and Professor Tomoe making a pretty decent Ricky Martin of evil. However, this by no means implies that any of the aforementioned villains are, or ever would be, the epitome of all that is glorious and fantastic. (At least in terms of evil.)

We can leave that to Freddy-Mercury!Chaos-Entity.

Yet the sad truth is that all of these villains have been done, overdone and stick-a-fork-in-me-I'm-done to death. When you get right down to it, were any of them truly memorable or did they just feel recycled from the leftovers of the previous season? Magical girl badguys (and girls), by their very nature, are repetitive, overblown and ultimately wind up as sad caricatures of villainy. Gone are the antagonists of yore who actually paid attention to the Evil Overlord List, and dared to do the dirtywork themselves instead of letting overpaid, incompetent underlings fail time and time again.

But what if evil had evolved?

What would the Sailor Senshi do if everything they'd ever faced before paled against the darkness before them? What if it knew their secrets, their hidden thoughts and fears and desires? What if it knew their names, and the names of every possible person they'd ever cared about?

What then?

Certainly it sounds like a fascinating if not terrifying premise: the tantalizing prelude to a fanfic of absolute brilliance and sinister flair. And what possible villain could ever be introduced into Tokyo and herald such an ominous apocalypse?

A parking lot.

No, really.

Laugh all you want, but the sad, dark truth is that of all the nexuses of evil in this world, 90 are located smack-dab beneath a parking lot. (The other 10 are just Hellmouths.)

Or have you simply failed to notice that terrible things seem to occur in greater numbers the second you dare to lurch your car into a parking lot? Nice little old ladies cut you off in order to secure an open space 3 spots away from the front entrance, and then make very rude gestures because apparently being angry that they removed your front bumper in the process is a bad thing. Minivans will idle in the middle of the laneway for a half hour just waiting for a nearby space to open up, when there are plenty of vacant spots further down the way, though it does mean having to spend an extra minute walking out in the sunlight. And metal shopping carts, seemingly possessed (and probably are), careen wildly down the lanes, eyeing their victims until one poor car happens to stand out as "needing a good dent in their passenger door".

Parking lots are poised to take over the world and subjugate humanity.

Tokyo was no exception.

It was an otherwise beautiful day, filled with fluffy cumulonimbus clouds (one of which bore an uncanny resemblance to Sailor Lead Crow if she was short, blonde and looked like Hugo Weaving). The sun was shining, birds were singing, cats were eating the birds and people were probably getting some form of skin cancer from standing out in the shining sun too long. Somewhere out there, an otaku was making a very scary hentai dojinshi featuring Sailor V, Hermione Granger and a Psyduck..

In the middle of the Jyuban district, a happy-go-lucky (and more importantly, happy-go-the-speed-limit-and-no-faster) deliveryman for a ramen shop made his rounds. Strapped to the back of his twelve-speed bicycle was a two-tiered, rectangular food carton with the words "NEKO HANTEN" emblazoned on the sides. Despite being horribly myopic and an utter failure when it came to dating, he found himself quite optimistic. Today was going to be a fantastic day for him.

His horoscope had told him so.

SAGITTARIUS: don't be afraid to say what's really on your mind, and you will

find yourself unexpectedly rewarded for it.

And so with a song in his heart and a food order on his bike, he'd pedalled through the city, confident in the knowledge that for once victory would be his in every possible sense of the word. However, if he'd read further, he would have also noticed that the horoscope went on to say:

Also, your doom is certain and imminent. Avoid any of the following things:

ramen noodles, twelve-speed bicycles and cheese wedges. Now is still a

good day to shop for pants.

The ramen delivery guy's journey came to an end in the middle of a parking lot that had been squished between two moderately impressive buildings, and was filled with lots of very nice cars any seemingly-possessed grocery cart would have argued as needing a good dent in their passenger door. And perhaps most strangely enough, no one was there to pick up his order.

Scratching his head, the ramen delivery guy got off his bike and consulted the receipt once more. The address for the drop-off was indeed listed as the parking lot itself. It also added that whomever was bringing the order should smear themselves with barbeque sauce beforehand. The delivery guy figured it was just a typo.

"Hello!" he called out. "Neko Hanten ramen delivery service! I have your order!"

And that's when he heard a raspy, disembodied voice cackle across the wind:

"I sense it…the shimmer of a brilliant soul…I can feel it!"

Now by and large, raspy, disembodied voices should be avoided as a matter of principle. But then again, if the ramen delivery guy was ever going to get a tip, he knew he had to locate the source of this, raspy disembodied voice and politely ask it to cough up the cash for its order.

The parking lot, however, had other ideas.

Tendrils of blackened asphalt rose up from the ground and immediately wrapped themselves around the spokes of the delivery guy's bicycle, pulling the hapless twelve-speed down into the parking lot's gullet. The remaining dozen or so tendrils opted to attack the ramen delivery guy, who was now perilously perched upon the hood of the nearest car for safety.

In the face of such unexpected danger and certain doom, the ramen delivery guy was the very embodiment of selfless heroics. As he kicked away the ever-growing mass of tendrils, he held his carton aloft and in a defiant voice exclaimed, "You can have my double order of pork uudon and etamame when you pry this carton from my cold, dead hands!"

The ramen delivery guy took his job very seriously.

Sadly, three hours later, Usagi would still be wondering where the hell her double order of pork uudon and etamame had gotten to.